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XI* 

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Extracted  from  Transactions  of  the  American  Philological 
Association,  Vol.  LI,  1920. 


XI.  —  The  Juvenile  Works  of  Ovid  and  the  Spondaic  Period  of 
His  Metrical  Art1 

BY  PROFESSOR  ROBERT  S.  JRADFORD 

UNIVERSITY    OF   TENNESSEE 
CO 

GD      I.   Introduction.     Ovid  and  the  Messalla  Collection 

to  IN  his  chapter  on  famous  orators,  Quintilian  aptly  observes 
That,  for  later  generations,  Cicero  had  become  not  so  much 
name  of  a  person  as  the  designation  of  the  art  of  oratory, 
may  apply  a  similar  remark  to  the  Latin  poet  Ovid.     To 
students   of   Roman   literature    Ovid   means    the   perfected 
^elegiac  art,   the  supreme  mastery  of  the  technical  side  of 
Latin  verse,   to  which  he  contributed  an  unparalleled  ele- 
gance and  grace.     Yet  it  is  certain  that  he  was  also  a  person, 

and  we  know  more  of  the  actual  details  of  his  life  than  of  the 
I*- 

?  life  of  any  other  Roman,  with  the  single  exception  of  Cicero. 

Every  schoolboy  is  familiar  with  the  charming  picture  which 
^  he  has  given  in  the  Tristia  of  his  early  devotion  to  the  Muses, 
^  in  spite  of  the  remonstrances  of  his  father  and  the  arguments 

which  the  latter  urged  against  unprofitable  literary  pursuits. 

X.        '  Bibliography  :  — Hultgren,  Observationes  metr.  in  poetas  elegiacos  Gr.  et  Lat., 

^     Leipzig,   1871;    Kone,  Sprache  der  ram.   Epiker,  Minister,   1840;    Radford, 

"  Licensed  Feet  in  Latin  Verse,"  Studies  in  Honor  of  Maurice  Bloom-field  (New 

.  V     Haven,  1920),  251-272;    O.  F.  Gruppe,  Rom.  Elegie,  Leipzig,  1838;    Klee- 

mann,  De  libri  tertii  carminibus  quae  Tibulli  nom.  circumferuntur,  Strassburg, 

^-      1876;   Teuffel,  Studien  u.  Charaktcristiken ,  Leipzig,  1871;    Fuss,  De  elegiarum 

^      libra  quern  Lygdami  esse  putant  quidam,  Miinster,  1867;    Krafft,  De  artibus 

^/      quas  Tib.  et  Lygd.  in  versibus  concinnandis  adhibuerunt,  Halle,  1874;    Paroli, 

De  Tib.  arte  metr.  cum  Lygd.  comparata,  Brescia,  1899;    Hartung,  De  pane- 

u_      gyrico   ad  Messallam  pseudo-Tib.,   Halle,    1880;     Ehrengruber,   De   panegyr. 

O      Messallae  pseudo-Tib.,  partes  i-x,   Kremsmiinster,   1889-1899;    Knappe,   De 

£3      Tib.  libri  quarti  elegiis,  Dud   -stadt,  1880;    Nemethy,  Albii  Tibulli  carmina, 

3      etc.,  Budapest,  1905  ;   Lygdami  carmina,  Budapest,  1906;  K.  F.  Smith,  Elegies 

of  Tibullus,  New  York,  19,13;   Burman,  Ovidii  opera  omnia,  Amsterdam,  1756, 

with  Index  Verborum;    Eschenburg,  Wie  hat  Ovid  einzelne  Warier  u.  Wort- 

klassen  im  Verse  iierwandt?,  Lubeck,  1886;    H.  de  la  Ville  de  Mirmont,  "  Le 

poete  Lygdamus,"    Musee  Beige,  vm   (1904),   339-403;     Plessis,    La  poesie 

latine  (Paris,  1909),  361-376  ;  Schanz,  Gesch.  d.  rom.  Lit.  n3,  i,  232  ff. ;  Ullrich, 

Studia  Tib.:  De  libri  n  editione,  Berlin,  1880. 


^;<QJ/?O 
<  ^oHK>«w 


Vol.  li]  The  Juvenile  Works  of  Ovid  147 

He  was  one  of  the  most  precocious  of  Roman  poets,  and  like 
Cowley  or  like  Pope  he  "  lisped  in  numbers,  for  the  numbers 
came."  2  According  to  his  own  account,  when  he  first  re- 
cited his  juvenile  poems  to  a  public  audience,  his  "  beard 
had  been  shaved  only  once  or  twice."  3  This  plain  statement 
is  usually  misinterpreted,  but  clearly  the  natural  meaning  is 
that  when  he  first  entered  the  circle  of  his  patron,  Messalla, 
he  was  only  fifteen  or  sixteen  years  of  age.1  Beginning  to 
write  at  so  early  a  period,  when  the  simpler  and  more  natural 
school  of  Catullus.  Gallus,  and  Fropertius  was  still  in  the 
ascendant,  Ovid  passed  through  a  long  period  of  apprentice- 
ship and,  after  much  wavering  and  much  experimentation, 
eventually  abandoned  the  more  natural  manner  with  which 
he  had  begun,  and  went  over  wholly  to  the  more  artistic  and 
more  epigrammatic  style  of  Tibullus,  which  he  found  better 
suited  to  his  own  rhetorical  training  and  to  which  he  finally 
gave  an  undisputed  supremacy  in  the  domain  of  Roman 
elegy.  It  is  true  that  a  different  opinion  is  usually  held 
today,  and  it  is  everywhere  assumed  that  he  devoted  himself 
from  the  first  to  the  imitation  of  Tibullus  and  possessed  from 
the  beginning  the  remarkable  facility  and  skill  which  make 
him  easily  the  first  of  Roman  metrical  artists.  This  view- 
seems  to  me  wholly  erroneous,  and  I  shall  begin  in  the  present 
study  to  trace  the  various  stages  by  which  Ovid,  the -historical 
person,  the  friend  of  Messalla,  the  disciple  first  of  Catullus 
and  later  of  Tibullus,  reached  the  acme  of  artistic  perfection. 
As  is  well  known,  the  poet  Ovid  possessed  brilliant  powers 
of  description,  and  was  both  a  natural  story-teller  and  a 

-  Sponte  sua  carmen  numeros  veniebat  ad  aptos, 

Et  quod  temptabam  scribere  (in  prose),  versus  erat.  —  Trlst.  iv,  10,  2;. 

Ub.57- 

4  There  was  no  definite  time  fixed  for  the  dcpositio  barbac,  but  it  usually- 
coincided  with  the  assumption  of  the  toga  'drills  (Suet.  Calig.  10).  Most 
writers  incorrectly  make  this  statement  refer  to  Ovid's  twentieth  or  twenty- 
second  year,  as  Schanz,  Gcsch.  d.  rom.  Lit.  n3,  i,  §  293;  J.  Heuwes,  De  teni- 
porc  quo  Of.  A  mores  conscripti  sint  (Miinster,  1883),  14;  Cruttwell,  Rom. 
Lit.  3c<>,  etc. 


148  Robert  S.  Radford  [1920 

highly  trained  rhetorician.  He  is  noted  for  his  "  swift  light- 
ness of  touch,"  his  brief,  snappy  sentences,  his  sharp  con- 
trasts, and  his  terse  and  highly  polished  epigrams  (cf. 
K.  F.  Smith,  op.  ciL  Introd.  103  ff.).  Since  we  seek,  how- 
ever, to  trace  an  actual  historical  development,  it  may  be 
worth  while  to  return  for  a  moment  to  '  Ovid  '  in  the  mean- 
ing of  the  perfected  art  of  elegy,  and  to  picture  clearly  the 
numerous  refinements  which  his  finished  technique  embraces. 
These  rules  include  the  breaking  up  of  the  long  sentence  and 
the  restriction  of  the  thought  to  a  single  distich,  the  avoid- 
ance of  elision,  especially  in  the  latter  half  of  both  the  hex- 
ameter and  the  pentameter,  the  marked  preference  given  in 
the  hexameter  to  the  favorite  masculine  caesura  (the  semi- 
quinaria),  the  ending  of  the  pentameter  with  a  dissyllable, 
which  should  not  be  an  adjective,  but  either  a  noun  or  a 
verb,  and  above  all  the  preponderance  of  dactyls  in  the 
distich  in  direct  opposition  to  the  original  and  native  char- 
acter of  the  language.  Through  the  observance  of  these 
complex  requirements  the  elegiac  couplet  gains  an  incom- 
parable elegance  and  precision,  at  the  same  moment  that  it 
loses  its  larger  variety,  freedom,  and  ease.  Tibullus  himself 
had  narrowed  the  sphere  of  Roman  elegy  by  rejecting  the 
natural  period  and  restricting  the  thought  within  the  mini- 
mum space  of  two  lines.  This  limitation,  which  is  unknown 
to  Catullus  and  Propertius,  is  undoubtedly  a  serious  mistake, 
and  it  finds  little  justification  of  any  kind  in  the  previous 
history  of  the  elegy.  Yet,  although  he  gave  an  artificial 
form  to  the  distich,  Tibullus,  through  the  expression  of  simple 
and  natural  emotion,  invariably  retained  its  proper  content, 
and  he  could  not  foresee  perhaps  that  the  more  brilliant  but 
more  wayward  Ovid  would  too  often,  through  the  absence 
of  sincere  and  genuine  feeling,  merge  the  elegy  in  the  epigram 
and  make  both  form  and  content  unduly  artificial.  Both 
Tibullus  and  Ovid  then  were  consummate  artists,  but  both 
yielded  too  much  to  the  prevailing  tendency  of  the  Augustan 
age  in  restricting  the  liberty  and  the  spontaneity  of  their 


Vol.  li]  The  Juvenile  Works  of  Ovid  149 

verse.  Tibullus  is  excessively  rhetorical  in  form,  Ovid  is 
excessively  rhetorical  in  both  form  and  thought.  (See  also 
some  just  observations  in  Sellar,  Horace  and  the  Elegiac 
Poets,  307.) 

Even  more  characteristic  of  our  poet,  however,  than  the 
unity  of  the  distich  and  the  tyrannis  of  the  dissyllabic  close 
is  the  dactylic  preponderance.     We  may  say  that  Ovid  is  the 
poet,  par  excellence,  of  the  dactylic  virtuosity,  which  appears 
alike  in  his  epic  and  his  elegiac  verse.     While  the  Greek  lan- 
guage is  twice  as  rich  in  dactyls  as  in  spondees,0  in  Latin  this 
relation  is  reversed,   and   the   Roman  language  has  almost 
twice  as  many  spondees  as  dactyls.     In  all  the  other  poets 
of  Rome  (with  the  exception  only  of  Valerius  Flaccus  and  a 
few  genuine  elegies  of  Tibullus'  second  book)  the  spondees 
considerably  exceed  the  dactyls;    Ovid  alone  has  known - 
like  the  Medea  or  the  Circe  of  his  own  exuberant  fancy  - 
how  to  transform,  by  the  magic  of  his  art,  the  slow  but  stately 
spondees  of  his  native  speech  into   the  light  and  graceful 
dactyls  of  Hellenic  verse.     Through  this  supreme  refinement 
he  has  brought  to  fulfillment  the  mission  which  Ennius,  the 
hardy  pioneer,  had  vaguely  dreamed  of  nearly  two  centuries 
before,  and  has  banished  from  Latium  the  last  trace  of  Italian 
rusticity  (cf.  Hor.  Epist.  n,  i,  160).     He  is  the  greatest  artist 
in  verse  that  Rome  produced,  the  supreme  master  both  in 
the  elegy  and  in  the  epos.     It  is  no  wonder  then  that  Lucian 
Miiller  exclaims  in  ecstatic  admiration  (De  re  metrica-,   522)  : 
"  Hunc  igitur  virum,  qui  principatum  haud  dubie  tenet  artis 
Latinae,  veneremur,  hunc  imitemur.     hie  sciat  se  plurimum 
profecisse,  cui  plurimum  probetur  Ovidius.     huius  quot  sunt 
versus,  totidem  sunt  artificia,  quovis  Phidiae  ilia  vel  Praxitelis 
opere  nonminora."6     Our  chief  metrical  scholars  have  carried 
their  worship  and  adoration  so  far  that  they  have  ended  by 
creating  a  veritable  '  Ovid  myth.'     Ovid  is  Rome's  one  white 


150  Robert  S.  Radford  [1920 

crow  and  he  was  always  white.  His  art  is  free  from  the 
trammels  of  place  and  time,  and  knows  no  process  of  growth, 
no  stage  of  development,  but  the  Fates  conferred  upon  the 
divine  man  7  at  his  birth  a  faculty  that  was  miraculously 
complete.  Hence  Lucian  Miiller,  op.  oil.  346,  pronounces  a 
passage  in  the  Amores,  which  contains  several  elisions,  inter- 
polated, and  declares  those  Epistles  of  the  Heroines,  which 
show  one  or  two  polysyllabic  closes,  to  be  spurious  (ib.  29  ff., 
259).  Hultgren,  op.  cit.  26  ff.,  insists  that  the  comparative 
lack  of  virtuosity  in  the  de  Medicamine  fragment  is  not  the 
result  of  immature  art,  but  of  pure  accident,  and  asserts 
that  to  attribute  to  Ovid  any  work  actually  lacking  the 
virtuosity  would  be  to  "  place  the  head  of  Thersites  upon 
the  body  of  Agamemnon  "  (ib.  32).  Ehrengruber,  who  has 
computed  or  collected  the  percentages  of  so  many  Latin 
poets,  announces  the  rule  that  each  author  has  his  definite 
dactylic  proportion  from  which  he  never  greatly  departs 
(op.  cit.  x,  12  ff.).  Even  such  a  master  of  statistics  as  Dro- 
bisch,  when  he  acutely  observes  that  "  the  Amores  of  Ovid, 
especially  in  the  hexameter,  fall  short  by  a  little  more  than 
2%  of  the  virtuosity  attained  in  the  Ars  "  (Ber.  sacks.  Ge- 
sellsch.  xxin  [1871],  33),  does  not  seem  to  have  grasped  the 
full  truth ;  for  he  apparently  thought  of  the  decline  in  the 
virtuosity  as  evenly  distributed  over  the  entire  Amores. 
In  point  of  fact,  nothing  could  be  more  erroneous  than  these 
views.  Thus  Quintilian,  ix,  3,  70,  had  before  him  a  collection 
of  Ovidian  epigrams  quite  similar  to  the  Priapea  and  con- 
taining rather  frequent  polysyllabic  closes ;  he  actually 
quotes  the  line,  Cur  ego  non  dicam,  Furia,  te  ftiriam  ? 

In  order  to  determine  the  whole  question  definitely,  I  have 
carefully  examined  the  three  books  of  the  Amores  which  we 
now  possess  and  which  were  not  published  before  2  B.C., 
when  the  poet  was  forty-one.  It  is  well  known  that  there 
was  an  earlier  edition  in  five  books,  published  in  14  B.C., 
when  the  poet  was  already  twenty-nine.  According  to  my 
7  Cf.  Cic.  Arch.  7,  16  :  hunc  dii'iiuim  hominem,  Africanum. 


Vol.  li]  The  Juvenile  Works  of  Ovid  151 

results,  nearly  one-fourth  of  the  poems  in  our  present  Amores 
have  been  retained  from  the  first  edition  with  little  change, 
and  still  show  the  original  spondaic  form  which  they  pos- 
sessed at  their  first  publication.  The  mature  works  of  Ovid, 
such  as  the  Ars,  show  57%  of  dactyls  in  the  distich,  while 
the  first  edition  of  the  Amores,  according  to  my  reconstruc- 
tion, did  not  greatly  exceed  48.5%.  The  remaining  three- 
fourths  of  our  present  edition  consists  of  poems  which  have 
either  been  fully  revised  or  newly  written,  and  if  the  spondaic 
fourth  be  subtracted,  their  percentage  rises  to  more  than  $6r, . 
In  other  words,  the  remaining  poems  show  practically  the 
same  virtuosity  as  the  mature  works.  In  the  second  section 
of  this  paper  I  shall  exhibit  these  results  more  fully  and  in 
tabular  form.  It  is  evident  therefore  that  Ovid  first  com- 
posed in  spondees,  which  is  precisely  what  we  should  expect 
on  a  priori  grounds.  For,  Latin  being  a  highly  spondaic 
language,  it  seems  just  about  as  possible  for  a  youthful  poet 
to  lisp  in  Chinese  or  in  Choctaw  as  in  Latin  dactyls.  We 
may  go  further,  however,  and  assert  that  even  if  Ovid,  on 
his  first  appearance  in  27  B.C.,  had  possessed  all  the  miraculous 
gifts  with  which  he  has  been  credited,  he  would  not  have 
actually  composed  in  dactyls.  It  is  true  that  even  at  this 
early  date  Tibullus  was  highly  esteemed,8  yet  the  memory 
of  the  free  republic  was  still  cherished,  and  the  more  natural 
school  of  Catullus  was  still  preferred.  Hence,  in  all  proba- 
bility, even  if  the  youthful  Ovid  had  possessed  the  dactylic 
faculty,  he  would  have  lacked  the  will  to  virtuosity,  since 
the  latter  implies  also  a  willingness  to  sacrifice  the  larger 
perspicuity  of  expression  and  the  normal  descriptive  word 
orders.  Furthermore,  two  of  the  three  highly  dactylic  elegies 
of  Tibullus'  second  book  were  not  composed  until  22  B.C., 
five  years  later,  as  is  shown  by  their  imitation  of  Propertius 
(Xemethy.  op.  cii.  .^S). 

The  importance  of  the  reconstruction  of  the  first  edition 

*  .  .   .  Leunturque  Tibullus 
Kt  placet,  et  iam  Ir  (xc.  A  Honshu  prhiripe  notus  erat.  —  Trist.  n,  464. 


152  Robert  S.  Radford  [1920 

of  the  Amores  and  of  the  consequent  recovery  of  the  youthful 
or  '  spondaic  '  Ovid  cannot  easily  be  overestimated.  Freed 
from  fanciful  and  unwarranted  presuppositions,  we  are  at 
liberty  to  restore  the  actual,  historical  Ovid,  and  we  shall  be 
able  to  show  in  the  sequel,  as  I  believe,  that  this  great  artistic 
genius,  beginning,  just  like  Catullus,  with  simple  nature  and 
therefore  in  some  cases  with  only  37%  of  dactyls  in  the  distich, 
has  made  in  less  than  twenty  years  an  unparalleled  develop- 
ment in  his  art,  and,  by  veritably  creating  a  new  language, 
such  as  Ennius  and  his  eager  successors  achieved  only  in 
part,  has  been  able,  in  the  works  of  his  full  maturity,  com- 
posed after  the  age  of  thirty-five,  to  rise  to  57%  of  dactyls 
in  the  distich.  I  do  not  seek,  however,  to  reconstruct  the 
spondaic  period  of  Ovid's  art  for  a  purely  theoretical  purpose 
nor  with  the  aim  of  contrasting  in  an  abstract  manner  the 
first  Amores  with  all  the  remaining  works;  I  wish  rather  to 
restore  the  poet's  early  life,  and  partly  by  following  in  the 
footsteps  of  eminent  critics,  such  as  Gruppe,  Plessis,  Klee- 
mann,  Ehrengruber,  Ribbeck,  Marx,  Schanz,  and  Cartault, 
partly  by  completing  and  enlarging  their  work.  I  hope  to 
endow  him  with  an  appropriate  set  of  spondaic  works.  These 
juvenile  works  are,  from  the  Appendix  Vergiliana.  at  least 
Catalepton,  ix,  and  from  the  Corpus  Tibullianum  the  whole 
of  the  Messalla  Collection  as  well  as  two  of  the  six  elegies 
contained  in  Tibullus'  second  or  posthumous  book.  The 
proper  discussion  of  these  poems  naturally  requires  a  series 
of  articles.  In  the  present  study  I  shall  deal  only  with  the 
metrical  development,  while  in  several  articles  to  be  published 
shortly  in  the  American  Journal  of  Philology,  I  shall  examine 
in  detail,  with  the  help  of  Burman's  much  neglected  Index, 
the  language  of  the  juvenile  poems  in  relation  to  Ovid's  mature 
works  and  also  sketch  more  fully  the  history  of  the  contro- 
versy which  has  raged  for  more  than  a  century  among  critics 
over  the  authorship  and  value  of  the  Messalla  Collection.9 

9  So  far  as  concerns  the  Lygdamus  elegies,  a  most  just  and  admirable  ac- 
count of  the  controversy  is  given  by  H.  de  la  \~ille  de  Mirmont,  op.  cit.  339- 


Vol.  li]  The  Juvenile  Works  of  Ovid  153 

A  briefer  outline,  however,  of  the  various  opinions  of 
scholars  cannot  be  wholly  omitted  here,  especially  as  the 
controversy  over  the  Lygdamus  poems  constitutes  one  of  the 
most  amazing  chapters  in  the  whole  history  of  literary  criti- 
cism. I  may  begin  with  the  so-called  Messalla  Collection. 
This  latter  is  a  collection  of  famous  poems  emanating  from 
the  household  of  the  great  Augustan  statesman,  Valerius 
Messalla.  In  our  fourteenth-century  codices  it  forms  a 
single  book,  added  to  the  unfinished  second  book  of  Tibullus 
and  apparently  published,  like  the  posthumous  second  book, 
in  19  B.C.  The  Italian  scholars  of  the  fifteenth  century  have 
wrongly  divided  this  additional  book  into  two,  the  so-called 
third  and  fourth  books  of  Tibullus,  and  for  the  purpose  of 
avoiding  confusion  it  seems  best  to  retain  this  division. 
(Probably,  as  all  the  mediaeval  citations  show,  there  were 
originally  only  '  two  books  of  Tibullus,'  and  the  second  book 
of  1 1 ii  verses  was  first  divided  at  the  close  of  the  Middle 
Ages  into  the  second  and  third  books  which  our  late  codices 
exhibit ;  see  Ullrich,  op.  clt.  69.)  In  the  six  elegies  of  the 
third  book  a  youth  apparently  of  eighteen  or  nineteen,  yet 
already  famous  as  a  poet  and  employing  the  pseudonym  of 
Lygdamus,  seeks  to  wrin  back  the  love  of  the  fair  Neaera, 
who  has  divorced  him.  It  is  probable,  too,  that  he  has  given 
cause  for  the  divorce,  though  naturally  this  is  not  admitted 
and  he  pleads  a  difficult  case  with  wonderful  facility.  Al- 
though the  poems  of  unhappy  love  easily  admit. of  being 
turned  to  ridicule  by  an  unfair  critic  like  Voss,  I  know  of  no 
juster  criticism  upon  them  than  that  of  Teuffel,  written  in 
mature  life  and  before  he  (like  Dissen)  had  lent  an  ear  to  the 
slanders  of  Voss :  "  These  elegies,  through  the  freshness  and 
sincerity  of  the  feeling  and  the  graceful  ease  of  the  verse,  do 
their  author  no  discredit."  10  As  is  well  known,  Lygdamus 

403.     Although  the  author  does  not  fully  understand  the  real  issues,  I  \vish 
to  acknowledge  my  deep  indebtedness  to  the  historical  part  of  this  fine  study. 
10  Quoted  by  Kleemann,  op.  cil.  17,  from  Pauly's  Rcalcncyclopaedie,  vi.  2, 
1950  (1852). 


154  Robert  S.  Radford  [1920 

tells  us  the  exact  date  of  his  birth  (5,  18).  "  My  parents 
first  beheld  my  birthday,"  he  says,  "  in  the  year  in  which 
both  the  consuls  met  an  equal  fate  "  (cum  cecidit  fato  consul 
uterque  pari)  —  he  means  in  43  B.C.,  when  Hirtius  and  Pansa 
were  both  slain  in  battle  before  Mutina.  Now  precisely  the 
same  pentameter  (cum  cecidit,  etc.)  is  used  by  Ovid,  Trist. 
iv,  10,  6,  to  give  his  own  birth-date  of  43  B.C.  The  Renais- 
sance editors,  Scaliger  and  Vulpius,  perhaps  attached  less 
importance  to  the  dozen  or  more  whole  lines  and  half-lines 
which  Ovid  and  Lygdamus  have  in  common,  and  the  numerous 
other  amazing  coincidences,  but  they  knew  well  that,  in  the 
case  of  different  poets,  the  date  of  birth  and  the  birth-line 
cannot  be  borrowed.  Wishing  therefore  to  preserve  the  third 
book  for  Tibullus  and  to  prevent  it  from  being  assigned  to 
Ovid,  they  pronounced  the  birth-line  an  interpolation  from 
the  Tristia  and  bracketed  the  whole  distich.  The  same  pro- 
cedure was  followed  later  by  Broukhuysen  (1708),  Wunderlich 
(1817),  Bahrens  (1876),  and  Ramsay  (1887). 

Matters  remained  in  this  state  until  the  German  peasant 
poet  of  Mecklenburg  and  the  great  classical  translator,  Johann 
Heinrich  Voss,  appeared  upon  the  scene  (1810).  Voss's  works 
abound  in  homely  and  realistic  scenes  of  village  and  country- 
life,  and  his  idyl,  Luise,  published  in  1795,  furnished  Goethe 
with  a  model  for  Hermann  und  Dorothea.  He  was  naturally 
much  attracted  by  the  simple  pastoral  elegy  of  Tibullus,  and 
when  he  came,  in  the  third  book,  to  the  poems  of  Lygdamus 
with  their  brilliant  pictures  of  elegance  and  wealth,  he  saw 
at  once  that  this  courtly  city  poet  could  not  possibly  be 
Tibullus.  He  therefore  removed  the  name  of  Tibullus  from 
the  third  book  and  substituted  that  of  Lygdamus.  So  far 
he  showed  himself  an  excellent  critic,  but  he  did  not  stop 
here.  He  poured  forth  against  the  romanticist  masquerading 
under  the  name  of  the  unworldly  Tibullus  a  torrent  of  vitupera- 
tion and  of  coarse  abuse  that  is  well-nigh  incredible,  and  that 
many  of  our  editors  of  Tibullus  and  many  of  our  orthodox 
historians  of  Roman  literature  have  ever  since  repeated  in  the 


Vol.  li]  The  Juvenile  Works  of  Ovid  155 

most  credulous  or  most  servile  fashion,  but  naturally  in  lan- 
guage somewhat  more  decorous  and  more  restrained.11  Al- 
though Voss  never  possessed  any  great  vogue  in  Germany  at 
large  as  a  critic,  his  authority  among  classical  philologians 
was  immense,  and  it  is  chiefly  to  his  violent  attack  upon  the 
Lygdamus  elegies  that  we  must  ascribe  the  hopeless  con- 
fusion that  has  since  arisen  among  scholars  and  that  has 
made  the  question  of  the  authorship  of  these  poems  an  in- 
soluble '  mystery.'  A  part  of  the  responsibility  for  the  en- 
tanglement belongs,  however,  to  W.  Hertzberg,  the  well- 
known  editor  of  Propertius.  He  also  was  possessed  of  great 
authority  in  his  day,  although  his  conclusions  were  usually 
hasty  and  Plessis,  Etudes  sur  Properce,  80,  charges  him  with 
an  "  incurable  recklessness  "  (une  incurable  legerete).  Otto 
Friedrich  Gruppe,  a  critic  of  the  first  order,  had  just  published 
his  standard  work,  Die  rdmische  Elegie  (1838).  In  a  brilliant 
and  forceful  chapter  of  this  book  (pp.  105-143)  he  confidently 
identifies  Lygdamus  with  Ovid  and  Neaera  with  Ovid's  second 
wife,  the  "  blameless  spouse  "  of  the  Tristia,  iv,  10,  71,  who 
did  not,  however,  long  remain  married  to  the  poet.  Hertz- 
berg  at  once  came  forward  to  answer  Gruppe  and,  as  Teuffel 
believed  (op.  cit.  380),  to  make  the  identification  with  Ovid 
forever  impossible.  He  apparently  believed  that  the  Her  aides, 
which  stood  first  in  the  older  editions,  were  the  earliest  works 
of  Ovid.  Naturally  he  experienced  little  difficulty  in  showing 
that  these  poems  consist  almost  entirely  of  dactyls,12  and 

11  Of  course  every  classical  scholar  must  entertain  the  kindliest  feeling  and 
the  greatest  respect  for  the  famous  translator  of  the  Odyssey  and  of  the  Georgics, 
but  no  account  of  the  Lygdamus  controversy  can  be  intelligible  which  fails 
to  bring  out  strongly  Voss's  violent  prejudices  and  his  scurrilous  language. 
Fuss,  op.  cit.  54,  cites  numerous  examples  of  the  latter,  and  protests  earnestly 
against  such  unfair  methods  of  controversy.  It  appears  to  the  present  writer, 
however,  that  greater  blame  attaches  to  Voss's  obsequious  followers  than  to 
Voss  himself.  For  Voss  was  a  privileged  character  as  a  man  of  genius  who 
had  a  distinct  point  of  view  —  the  simple  life  and  the  return  to  nature.  Many 
of  the  scholars,  however,  who  have  been  content  to  take  their  criticism  at 
second  hand  from  Voss,  have  no  special  point  of  view  and  no  excuse  that  seems 
valid. 

"  In  his  versification  Ovid  skips  and  dances,  so  that  his  hexameter,  even 


156  Robert  S.  Radford  [1920 

show  an  excessive  accumulation  of  rhetorical  effects.  There- 
fore, he  concludes,  the  Lygdamus  elegies,  which  are  written 
in  spondees  and  in  a  natural  style,  cannot  possibly  be  the 
work  of  Ovid.  With  the  recklessness  which  Plessis  has 
justly  noted,  he  adds :  "  These  characteristics  of  the  metre 
are  precisely  those  which  stand  out  most  sharply  in  youth." 
The  truth  is  just  the  reverse,  and  Hultgren  correctly  lays 
down  the  rule  that  the  more  the  poet  advances  towards  the 
prime  of  life,  the  more  the  proportion  of  dactyls  and  of  dactylic 
beginnings  increases.13 

The  majority  of  careful  students,  be  it  said  to  their  credit, 
have  never  accepted  the  prejudiced  views  of  Voss :  thus  the 
elegies  have  been  vigorously  defended  by  Spohn  (1819),  by 
Golbery,  the  Lemaire  editor  (1826),  by  Fuss  (1867),  and  by 
Cranstoun,  the  English  translator  (1872).  Much  more 
moderate  views  are  also  to  be  found  in  Cruttwell  (1877), 
Ribbeck  (1889),  and  Sellar  (1892).  Finally,  Plessis,  in  his 
Pocsie  Latine  (1909),  in  the  chapter  devoted  to  Lygdamus 
(pp.  361-376),  has  at  once  paid  a  beautiful  tribute  to  the 
genuine  merits  of  these  elegies  and  given  a  noble  exemplifica- 
tion of  the  true  critic's  art.  In  his  view,  they  proceed  from 
a  youthful  poet  of  rare  and  brilliant  genius,  whose  native 
generosity  and  tenderness  of  feeling  have  not  yet  been  spoiled 
by  contact  with  the  corruptions  of  the  world. 

Gruppe  had  made  it  probable  that  the  Lygdamus  elegies 
are  the  work  of  Ovid,  but  he  had  not  proved  it.  This  proof 
was,  however,  definitely  rendered  by  S.  Kleemann  (1876), 
who,  in  an  elaborate  dissertation,  with  the  help  of  Burman's 

in  the  more  serious  poems  (Tristia  and  Fasti),  has  nothing  but  dactyls  in  almost 
a  half  of  the  verses  "  (Hallische  Jahrbiicher  i  [1839],  1024  ff.,  quoted  by  Teuffel, 
op.  dt.  380  ff.,  and  by  Kleemann,  op.  fit.  42  ff.). 

13  Op.  fit.  29 :  "  Hexametri  Ovidiani  illustria  exempla  sunt,  quae  decent 
eo  magis  crescere  numerum  dactylorum,  quo  magis  ipse  in  arte  procedat.  .  .  . 
Dubitari  amplius  nequit,  quin  poetarum  elegiacorum  poemata,  minus  dactylice 
in  principio  distichi  constructa,  inter  opera  iuvenilis  aetatis  referenda,  carmina 
autem  cum  plurimis  initiis  dactylicis  florenti  aetati  adnumeranda  sint."  Klee- 
mann, op.  fit.  29,  justly  lays  down  the  same  canon  for  Tibullus  :  "arte  erudita 
in  hexametris  dactylus  crebrior  fit." 


Vol.  li]  The  Juvenile  Works  of  Ovid  157 

Index,  examined  the  language  minutely  and  pronounced  it 
wholly  Ovidian.  It  should  be  added  that  Kleemann  used 
only  a  part  of  the  available  material  from  the  Index  and  the 
Ovidian  corpus  —  perhaps  not  more  than  one-half  —  but 
even  this,  in  my  judgment,  is  far  more  than  is  strictly  neces- 
sary for  purposes  of  valid  proof.  Kleemann's  study  was  much 
praised  by  the  reviewers,  but  otherwise  it  has  received  little 
attention.14  The  reasons  for  this  neglect  are  not  far  to  seek. 
Many  scholars  had  accepted  without  question  and  without 
independent  study  the  distorted  views  of  Voss  which  came 
to  them  in  a  slightly  diluted  form  through  the  voluminous 
commentary  of  Dissen ;  others  lay  entrenched  in  fancied 
security  behind  the  barrier  of  the  metre  which  Hertzberg 
had  so  conveniently  and  so  confidently  provided.  Strangely 
enough,  the  Index  to  Ovid  remained  practically  a  closed  book. 
As  soon  as  the  Burman  Index  is  used,  the  whole  Messalla 
Appendix  is  seen  to  be  unmistakably  the  work  of  the  youthful 
Ovid,  aetate  eighteen  to  twenty-four.15  There  is  complete 
identity  of  vocabulary,  and  all  the  most  characteristic  Ovidian- 
isms  are  in  the  Appendix,  except  only  those  which  were  de- 
veloped later  for  the  sake  of  the  virtuosity  and  which  are 
conveniently  enumerated  by  Eschenburg.  The  evidence 
which  is  drawn  merely  from  repeated  tags  and  half-verses, 
without  distinctive  peculiarity  of  usage,  is  of  course  incon- 
clusive for  an  author  like  Ovid  who  borrows  so  freely  from 
contemporary  poets,  but  the  proof  that  rests  upon  the  plain- 
est and  simplest  idioms  often  recurring  is  one  that  scarcely 
admits  of  doubt  or  question.  The  Lygdamus  poems,  com- 

11  An  honorable  exception  is  Professor  K.  P.  Harrington's  scholarly  edition 
of  the  Roman  elegiac  poets  (Selections,  1914).  Professor  Harrington  com- 
ments on  the  possible  identity  of  Ovid  and  Lygdamus  with  complete  candor 
and  with  an  open  mind,  although  he  does  not  commit  himself  definitely  (Introd. 
36). 

15  In  justice  to  myself,  it  is  only  fair  to  state  that  I  reached  my  conclusions 
as  to  the  identity  of  Lygdamus  and  Ovid  at  a  time  when  I  was  acquainted 
neither  with  Gruppe's  results  nor  with  those  of  Kleemann  and  Ehrengruber, 
but  was  obliged  to  rely  upon  the  simple  text  of  Ovid  and  Eichert's  lexicon  to 
the  Metamorphoses  (Hanover,  1886). 


1-8  Robert  S.  Radford  [1920 

posed  at  eighteen  or  nineteen,  contain  about  ninety  specific 
and  striking  Ovidianisms ;  Kleemann  gives  about  half  of 
these.  The  Panegyric  Upon  Messalla  contains  probably  more 
than  a  hundred  Ovidianisms ;  Ehrengruber  has  already  called 
attention  to  all  of  these,  and  in  order  to  explain  their  occur- 
rence, has  propounded  the  ingenious  theory  that  the  Pane- 
gyric was  a  school  exercise  composed  in  a  later  age  by  some 
pupil  of  the  rhetoricians  who  had  access  to  all  the  works  of 
Ovid  and  pilfered  most  freely  from  them  all.16  Next,  as  the 
metre  shows,  come  the  six  little  letters  of  Sulpicia,  the  kins- 
woman of  Messalla,  in  which  this  lady  (with  Ovid's  sympa- 
thetic assistance)  undertakes  the  part  of  wooing  the  shy 
youth,  Cerinthus;  they  contain  more  than  twelve  Ovidian- 
isms. About  21  B.C.,  aetate  twenty-two,  Ovid  composed  the 
five  charming  elegies  giving  in  fuller  form  the  story  of  the 
same  pair  of  happy  lovers,  Sulpicia  and  Cerinthus ;  they 
show  more  than  forty  Ovidianisms  and  47.4%  of  dactyls, 
thus  approaching  closely  to  the  proportion  of  the  first  Amores 
(about  48.5%).  The  exquisite  imitation  of  Tibullus,  Nulla 
tuum  nobis  (iv,  13),  that  closes  the  collection,  has  ten  Ovidian- 
isms. Since  Ovid  edits  the  unfinished  second  book,  the  two 
spondaic  elegies,  with  Ovidian  language  and  thought,  are  in 
all  probability  his  work,  and  can  no  longer  be  ascribed  to 
Tibullus  either  in  whole  or  in  part.  The  poem  in  honor  of 
Messalinus  (n,  5)  has,  in  fact,  long  occasioned  difficulty,  and 
has  been  known  for  nearly  a  century  as  the  '  suspected  elegy.' 
The  other  Ovidian  elegy,  n,  2,  is  evidently  a  continuation  of 
the  Sulpicia  group,  and  celebrates  the  birthday  of  the  shy  but 
sorely  smitten  lover  Cerinthus,  who  is  now  happily  married 
to  Sulpicia  and  is  therefore  given  his  true  name  of  Cornutus. 
This  poem  is  rightly  assigned  to  the  '  fourth  book  '  by  Gruppe. 
The  conclusions  which  we  have  reached  upon  grounds  of 
language  and  metre  are  supported  also  by  strong  external 

16  Op.  cil.  x,  71  ;  n,  28;  in,  So,  etc.  This  treatise  of  more  than  700  pages 
in  all  is  a  magnificent  collection  of  material  and,  in  spite  of  its  technically 
erroneous  conclusion,  is  truly  a  masterly  piece  of  work. 


Vol.  li]  The  Juvenile  Works  of  Ovid  159 

evidence.  Thus  in  the  letters  of  the  exile  Ovid  refers  in 
unmistakable  terms  to  the  issuance  of  the  Appendix,  when 
he  writes  that  it  was  Messalla  who  first  induced  him  to  ven- 
ture upon  the  publication  of  his  works.17  He  mentions 
expressly  the  epicedion  which  he  had  composed  upon  the 
death  of  his  patron  and  which  was  sung  in  the  forum  (Pont. 
i,  7,  29  fL),  but  he  also  refers  again  and  again  to  poems  which 
he  had  composed  in  Messalla's  honor  in  his  early  youth. 
Thus  he  writes  that  not  even  the  eldest  son,  Messalinus,  can 
remember  the  time  when  he  "  first  began  to  venerate  Mes- 
salla "  (Pont,  n,  3,  79  ff.).  This  last  statement  scarcely 
applies,  I  think,  to  our  Panegyric,  but  can  be  more  fitly 
referred  to  an  earlier  eulogy  which  we  fortunately  still  possess 

-I  mean  Catalepton  ix  (xi),  contained  in  the  Appendix 
Vergiliana,  a  poem  which  celebrates  Messalla's  triumph  over 
Aquitania,  and  which  was  therefore  written  in  the  year 
27  B.C.  Ribbeck,  Appendix  Vergil.  Proleg.  12,  and  Gesch. 
d.  rom.  Die/it,  u,  200,  has  already,  on  stylistic  and  metrical 
grounds,  identified  the  author  of  this  elegy  with  '  Lygdamus,' 
and  both  Marx  (Pauly-Wissowa,  i,  1326,  s.  v.  Albius)  and 
Schanz,  op.  cit.  §  282,  p.  233,  speak  approvingly  of  this  view. 
I  find  on  examination  that  these  judgments  are  strongly 
supported  by  the  language  of  the  poem,  and  this  elegy  may 
therefore  be  confidently  regarded  as  the  earliest  extant  work 
of  Ovid,  written  in  his  seventeenth  year ;  in  fact,  in  a  brief 
monograph  and  admirable  commentary  which  was  published 
some  years  ago,  but  has  just  come  into  my  hands  at  the 
moment  of  writing  (De  Ovidio  elegiac  in  Messallam  auctore, 
Budapest,  1909),  Nemethy,  I  find,  has  already  clearly  per- 
ceived and,  in  large  measure,  convincingly  demonstrated  the 
Ovidian  authorship  of  the  Catalepton.  Messalinus,  the  eldest 
son,  quindecemvir  19  B.C.,  consul  3  B.C..  was  probably  born 
about  38-36  B.C.,  and  can  therefore  scarcely  have  been  more 

than  ten  years  of  age  when  this  eulogy  was  composed. 

I  have  not  yet  spoken  of  the  date  of  the  second  eulogy 

17  Pont,  u,  3,  75  ff.  (addressed  to  Cotta,  the  younger  son). 


160  Robert  S.  Radford  [1920 

which  we  possess,  namely,  the  elaborate  Panegyric  of  the 
Messalla  Collection.  This  brilliant  and  highly  rhetorical 
work  is  metrically  more  advanced  than  the  Lygdamus  elegies 
and  was  certainly  composed  at  a  later  date  than  these  poems. 
Undoubtedly,  by  an  ingenious  literary  or  artistic  fiction,  the 
Panegyric  itself  purports  to  be  written  in  the  year  of  Messalla's 
consulship,  31  B.C.,  and  the  events  of  the  years  30-27  B.C., 
namely,  the  expeditions  to  Aquitania  and  the  Orient,  which 
had  already  been  expressly  celebrated  by  Tibullus  (i,  7)  and 
by  the  youthful  Ovid  (Catalepton,  ix) ,  are  nowhere  mentioned 
as  having  actually  occurred.  Special  students  of  the  Pane- 
gyric, however,  have  long  seen  that  the  Gallic  and  Egyptian 
campaigns  are  well  known  to  the  clever  writer,  and  are  most 
skilfully  introduced  into  the  poem  by  way  of  prophecy  (vati- 
cinium  ex  eventu}.18  The  Panegyric  was  therefore  composed 
after  the  Lygdamus  elegies,  and  the  first  draft  of  the  poem 
must  have  been  drawn  up  about  the  year  23  B.C.  ;  it  treats 
chiefly  the  earlier  career  of  Messalla,  which  had  not  previously 
been  made  the  subject  of  poetic  encomium.  We  are  not  at 
present  fully  in  a  position  to  state  how  Ovid  was  occupied 
in  the  interval  between  the  composition  of  the  Lygdamus 
poems  and  the  Panegyric.  It  is  true  that  H.  de  la  Ville  de 
Mirmont  confidently  assumes  (Jeunesse  d'Ovide,  209)  that 
it  was  shortly  after  the  two  early  marriages  and  about  his 
twentieth  year  that  our  poet  visited  Asia  Minor  and  Sicily 
in  the  suite  of  the  poet  Macer,  and  at  first  glance  the  Pane- 
gyric also,  in  its  present  revised  and  perfected  form,  appears 
to  contain  probable  or  possible  references  to  Sicily  (vss.  197, 
200).  We  must  carefully  refrain,  however,  from  drawing 
hasty  conclusions  at  present  and  must  frankly  admit  that 
we  cannot  at  once  determine  the  exact  date  of  the  year  which 
Ovid  spent  with  Macer  in  Asia  and  Sicily  (Pont,  n,  10,  21  ft".). 
A  brief  word  must  be  said,  however,  upon  Ovid's  relation 
to  the  Ciris  (the  legend  of  Scylla  and  Nisus)  in  the  Appendix 

18  See  Hartung,  op.  ell.  38  ff. ;  Ehrengruber,  op.  cit.  i,  7  ;  x,  71 ;  also  Belling, 
Albius  Tibullus:    Untersuchung,  205  ff. 


Vol.  li]  The  Juvenile  Works  of  Ovid  161 

Vergiliana.  As  is  well  known,  this  poem  offers  special  peculi- 
arities and  difficulties.  Besides  being  partly  a  translation 
from  Greek  sources,  it  everywhere  closely  follows  the  manner 
of  Catullus  and,  owing  to  the  poet's  prodigious  memory,  in 
many  passages  it  presents  almost  the  appearance  of  a  cento 
compiled  from  Catullus  and  Vergil.  It  was  composed  after 
the  publication  of  the  complete  Aeneid  (19  B.C.),  the  whole 
of  which  it  imitates.  The  agreement  therefore  of  the  Ciris 
with  the  usual  Ovidian  vocabulary  is  not  quite  so  close  as 
we  find  in  the  other  juvenile  works,  yet  it  is  sufficient,  I 
believe,  easily  and  conclusively  to  establish  Ovidian  author- 
ship, especially  when  we  consider  that,  by  a  species  of  /eeW<m 
and  in  a  purely  temporary  stage  of  his  art,  the  poet  has  di- 
vested himself  of  a  part  at  least  of  his  usual  and  natural 
manner.  Certain  it  is  that  the  situation  described  in  the 
poem  suits  Ovid  and  Ovid  alone.  The  work  is  addressed 
(vss.  36  and  54)  to  the  young  "  Messalla,"  by  whom  Mes- 
salinus  is  evidently  meant.  The  writer  definitely  renounces 
(vss.  1-2)  the  public  career  to  which  he  had  formerly  devoted 
himself  and  of  which  he  has  now  grown  weary,  but  there  is 
not  a  word  in  the  poem  to  warrant  the  usual  assumption  that 
the  author  was  a  man  of  advanced  years  who  had  reached  the 
age  of  forty-five  or  fifty.19  On  the  contrary,  the  situation  is 
precisely  that  described  in  Trist.  iv,  10,  33-40,  i.e.,  the  author 
has  held  certain  minor  offices  in  the  cursus  honorum  and  now 
refuses  to  go  further  in  the  pursuit  of  public  honors.  Hence 
no  one  who  has  followed  the  career  of  Ovid  with  genuine 
interest  can  read  the  opening  lines  of  the  Ciris  without  some 
thrill  of  emotion.20  Refusing  to  become  a  candidate  for  the 
quaestorship  and  the  senatorial  rank  at  the  age  of  twenty- 

19  Teuffel-Schwabe,  Hist,  of  Rom.  Lit.,  Eng.  trans.  §  230,  2,  i;  Ribbeck, 
Gesch.  d.  rb'm.  Diclit.  n,  355;  Schanz,  op.  cit.  §  241. 

20Propertius  also  (in,  21,  25  ff.)  finely  pictures  himself  as  a  student  at 
Athens  in  the  school  of  Plato  or  the  garden  of  Epicurus,  but  the  scene  is  prob- 
ably an  imaginary  one.  At  a  more  youthful  age  and  with  less  experience  of 
the  world,  Horace  too  visited  Athens  and  "  sought  for  truth  amid  the  groves 
of  the  Academy  "  (Episl.  n,  2,  45). 


162  Robert  S.  Radford  [1920 

six,  the  poet  whose  influence  upon  subsequent  European 
literature  was  to  be  so  vast,  hastens  to  Athens,21  the  "  fair 
garden  of  Cecrops,"  !2  and  the  true  home  of  the  intellectual 
life,  in  order  to  drink,  at  the  fountain  source,  of  the  ever- 
living  waters,  and  to  worship  at  the  shrine  of  the  world's 
four  great  Teachers.23  With  the  over-sanguine  temperament 
of  youth,  he  even  dreams  of  composing  at  some  future  time 
a  great  epic  upon  nature  and  the  creation  that  shall  rival 
the  sublime  and  majestic  work  of  Lucretius.24  The  Ciris  is 
to  be  placed  then  about  the  middle  of  Ovid's  spondaic  period ; 
it  precedes  the  first  Amores  and  also  three  or  four  other  works 
belonging  to  the  carmina  iuvenalia. 

•40 

II.   Transition  from  Sulpicia  Elegies  to   Amores.     Spondaic 
Character  of  First  Amores 

The  percentage  of  dactyls  and  of  dactylic  beginnings  which 
the  juvenile  poems  of  Ovid  exhibit  may  be  seen  in  a  summary 
form  from  the  table  below.  In  the  case  of  elegiac  verse  the 
percentage  is  here  given  for  the  whole  distich,  that  is,  it  has 
been  obtained  by  combining  the  first  four  feet  of  the  hex- 
ameter and  the  first  two  feet  of  the  pentameter ;  in  the  case 
of  epic  verse,  the  percentage  is  for  the  first  four  feet  of  the 
hexameter.  In  the  Lygdamus  elegies,  since  the  style  of  the 
youthful  poet  is  still  imperfectly  formed  and  he  vacillates 
between  two  proportions,  I  give  the  six  Lygdamus  elegies 
first  as  a  whole  and  secondly  as  forming  two  groups.  It  will 
be  found  that  the  second  group  (4  and  5)  gives  results  almost 

!1  Trist.  i,  2,  77  :   nee  peto,  quas  quondam  petii  studiosus,  Athenas. 

22  Etsi  me  vario  iactatum  laudis  amore 
Irritaque  expertum  fallacis  praemia  vulgi 
Cecropius  suavis  exspirans  hortulus  auras 

Florentis  viridi  sophiae  complectitur  umbra.  —  Ciris,  1-4. 

23  Plato,  Aristotle,  Zeno,  and  Epicurus;  cf.  Ciris,  15:   sapientia  .  .  .  quat- 
tuor  antiquis  heredibus  edita  censors. 

24  Ciris,  12-41.     The  plan  was  later  fulfilled  probably  in  the  Aetna  (the 
language  of  which  I  have  not  yet  examined  in  all  its  details)  and  in  the  pro- 
oemium  and  fifteenth  book  of  the  Metamorphoses,  also  perhaps  in  the  lost 
Phaenomena  and  in  parts  of  the  Fasti. 


Vol.  li] 


The  Juvenile  Works  of  Ovid 


identical  with  the  Sulpicia  letters.  The  figures  for  the  Pane- 
gyric and  the  Ciris  are  those  of  Ehrengruber  (op.  cit.  x,  5 
and  21).  The  Aetna,  which,  according  to  every  probability, 
is  also  the  work  of  Ovid,  is  omitted  from  the  comparison 
only  because  the  exact  figures  are  not  accessible  to  me  at  the 
present  writing ;  its  proportions  are.  however,  not  very  differ- 
ent from  those  of  the  Ciris.  There  appears  to  be  conclusive 
evidence  for  including  also  the  Culex,  though  I  was  long 
prevented  from  examining  the  language  of  this  poem  by 
erroneous  impressions  that  I  had  at  first  formed  respecting 
the  treatment  of  the  caesura  in  this  work.  Finally,  Pliny, 
N.H.  xxxii,  152,  was  wholly  mistaken  in  his  conjecture 
("  fortassis  ")  that  the  Halieutica  relates  to  the  "  fish  of 
the  Black  Sea  "  and  was  consequently  written  at  the  close 
of  the  poet's  life ;  the  schemata  show  conclusively  that  the 
poem,  wholly  dependent  as  it  is  upon  Greek  books,  belongs 
to  the  Lygdamus  and  Sulpicia  period. 

THE  JUVENILE  WORKS  OF  OVID 


Catalept. 

TV 

Halieut. 

Lygdamus, 
all  six 

Lygdamus, 
four 

Lygdamus, 
two 

Sulpicia 
Letters, 

IX. 

62  vss. 

130  hex. 

elegies.25 

elegies, 

i,  2,  3,  6. 

elegies, 

4i  5- 

IV,  7-12. 

290  vss. 

1  60  vss. 

130  vss. 

40  vss. 

SS.  Dact.2« 

53     44-8 

222    42.8 

359    41-3 

216   45.0 

144  36.9 

45   37-5 

SS.  Spond. 

75     55--' 

298    57.2 

5"    53.7 

264   55-o 

246  63.1 

75  62.5 

I.27  Dact. 

46     71.0 

62       47.7 

1  66  57.2 

ioi    63.1 

65    50.0 

20  50.0 

I.  Spond. 

1  8     28.1 

68     52-3 

124  42.8 

59     36-9 

65    50.0 

20  50.0 

Sulpicia 

Cornutus 

Messalinus, 

Elegies, 
IV,  2-6;  also 
IV.  1^-14. 

Elegy 
[Tib.]  I"I,  2. 

Elegy, 
[Tib.]  11,  5. 

Panegyric. 
211  hex. 

Ciris. 
527  hex. 

Culex. 

410  hex. 

22  VSS. 

122    VSS. 

142  vss. 

SS.  Dact. 

202    47.4 

33   50.0 

171      46.7 

379   44.9 

9i6   43-5 

781   47-6 

SS.  Spond. 

224    52.6 

33   5°-0 

1  05   53-3 

465    55-1 

1192  56.5 

859   52.4 

I.  Dact. 

99      69.7 

1  8  81.8 

95      77.8 

U3   67.7 

352  66.8 

2/5   67.1 

I.  Spond. 

43     30.3 

4      1  8.  2 

27        22.2 

68     32,3 

175  33-2 

135   32-9 

2:1  The  figures  arc  from  Klcemann,  op.  cit.  29  f. 
26  Summa  dactylorum. 


27  First  foot. 


164  Robert  S.  Radford  [1920 

A  few  words  of  explanation  may  be  added  to  the  tabular 
statement.  Ovid  began  in  Catalepton,  ix  with  a  proportion 
of  dactyls  which  was  wholly  normal  in  the  year  27  B.C.  Thus 
he  has  44.8%  in  the  whole  distich,  which  is  as  good  as  the 
second  and  third  books  of  Propertius,28  as  good  also  as  the 
eighth  and  third  elegies  of  Tibullus'  first  book.29  Yet  he  has 
no  limitations  whatever  in  Catalepton,  ix  upon  polysyllabic 
endings  in  the  pentameter;  on  the  contrary,  like  Catullus 
and  like  Propertius  in  his  earlier  work,  he  fairly  revels  in 
their  use  (50%).  In  the  Lygdamus  elegies,  however,  and 
in  the  Sulpicia  letters,  the  ambitious  and  aspiring  youth 
seeks  suddenly  to  pass  from  the  longer  endings  to  the  more 
elegant  dissyllables  of  Tibullus,  and  is  evidently  preoccupied 
with  this  problem  and  its  difficulties.  Under  these  conditions 
throughout  the  Lygdamus  poems  he  wavers  greatly  in  his 
composition,  and,  in  one  hundred  and  seventy  verses  (Lygd. 
4  and  5,  [Tib.]  rv,  7-12),  he  even  sinks  to  the  proportion  of 
Catullus,  namely,  about  37%  in  the  distich,  and  to  only 
50%  of  dactylic  beginnings.30  This  is  of  course  excellent 
Latin  elegy,  but  it  is  not  the  kind  that  was  most  in  vogue  in 
24  B.C.31  It  is  only  in  the  qualified  or  limited  sense  just  ex- 

28  Propertius  has  44.8%  and  44.7%  in  the  second  and  third  books  respec- 
tively.    My  figures  are  taken  from  Hultgren,  op.  cit.  23,  who  follows  the  five- 
book  division  of  Propertius. 

29  Tibullus  has  44.8%  in  the  eighth  elegy  (Pholoe)  for  the  whole    distich 
and  45%  in  the  third  elegy.     It  is  scarcely  fanciful  to  see  in  the  decline   of 
dactyls  in  the  third  elegy  an  expression  of  Tibullus'  sadness  and  depression  of 
feeling  during  his  illness  at  Corcyra ;    we  have  the  same  phenomenon  in  Lyg- 
damus' fifth  elegy.     My  figures  are  taken  from  Cartault,  Le  distiqitc  elegiaque 
chez  Tibitlle,  Sulpicia,  Lygdamus  (Paris,  191 1),  7. 

30  Figures  for  Catullus  are  given  by  Hultgren,  op.  cit.  15  ff.     Catullus  has 
usually  58%  to  6ori  of  dactylic   beginnings,  but  in  Carm.  69-119  (319   vss.) 
he  has  36.6^  of  dactyls  in  the  distich  and  only  47^  of  dactylic  beginnings. 

31  Catullus  wrote  some  of  the  best  Latin  elegy,  and  the  naturalness  and 
directness  of  his  style  is  due  in  part  to  his  not  exceeding  the  proportion  named. 
As  I  have   shown  in  my  "Licensed    Feet  in  Latin  Verse,"  op.  cit.  251-27?, 
even  the  best  Latin  poets,  such  as  Catullus  and  Horace,  experience  some  diffi- 
culty in  always  providing  one  required  dactyl,  and  therefore  they  occasionally 
admit  without  metrical  ambiguity  in  such  a  foot  exceptional  or  vulgar  short- 
enings and  even  short  vovels  (without  m)  in  hiatus,  as  Lucilius,  ix,  243  Bahr., 


Vol.  li]  The  Juvenile  Works  of  Ovid  165 

plained  that  Ovid  can  be  said  to  have  ever  been  a  disciple 
of  Catullus  in  the  matter  of  dactylic  proportions,  but  un- 
doubtedly in  his  youth  he  paid  this  brief  tribute  to  the  freer 
and  more  natural  style  of  his  great  predecessor.  A  secondary 
cause  for  the  low  proportion  may  perhaps  be  found  in  the  sad 
and  almost  despairing  character  of  the  two  elegies. 

It  will  be  noted  that  Ovid  advanced  in  the  Sulpicia  and 
Messalinus  poems  which  are  composed  in  the  elegiac  metre 
to  about  47%  of  dactyls  in  the  who!e  distich ;  the  hexameter 
lines  alone  of  these  poems  show  46.1%  and  45.9%  respectively. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  hexameters  of  purely  epic  poems  like 
the  Ciris  fall  back  to  43.5%,  which  is  normal  for  epic  verse 

o5re  cSrupto  (necessary  dactyl  of  the  hexameter);  Lucr.  vi,  1133,  natu5ra 
cSruptum;  Cat.  10,  26,  istos  c6mmoda;  nam  volo  £d  Sar&pim  (necessary 
dactyl  of  the  Phalaecean) ;  Hor.  Cann.  in,  14,  n,  iam  virum  expertae,  malS 
6minatis  (short  vowel  in  hiatus,  necessary  dactyl  of  the  Sapphic) ;  Pers.  3,  66, 
di'scitfi,  6  miseri  (license  of  the  first  foot,  with  greatly  preferred  dactyl) ;  Lux- 
orius,  302,  4,  magnum  depre5nderg  usum.  If  difficulty  is  experienced  in  supply- 
ing one  required  dactyl  for  the  Sapphic  or  the  hexameter,  it  is  clear  that  two 
necessary  dactyls,  as  in  the  pentameter,  constitute  a  very  exacting  demand 
upon  the  Roman  language,  and  if  the  virtuosity  is  also  insisted  upon,  a  very 
elegant  but  very  artificial  form  of  verse  is  the  result.  For  example,  for  metrical 
reasons,  Ovid  (like  Tibullus)  constantly  uses  ab  arte  and  similar  phrases  drawn 
from  the  vulgar  language,  with  its  analytical  tendency,  instead  of  the  simple 
ablative,  and  he  also  uses,  by  poetic  license,  to  an  unparalleled  extent,  the 
simple  ablative  for  the  ablative  of  the  agent  with  ab,  as  Her.  4,  64,  capti 
pare5ntg  sor6r,  '  my  sister  was  captivated  by  your  parent,'  where  neither 
parenti  nor  a  parente  could  enter  the  verse ;  upon  the  whole  subject  see  in  part 
Guttmann,  Sogenanntes  instrumentales  ab  bei  Ovid,  Dortmund,  1890.  I  was 
mistaken  therefore  in  my  former  discussion  (p.  271)  in  thinking  that  Ovid  had 
perhaps  actually  used  the  spelling  parente  for  the  dative  parenti,  as  he  so  often 
uses  mare  and  caeleste  for  mari  and  caelesti,  and  as  Statius,  Sih.  iv,  2,  28,  uses 
glaucae  certantia  Dobride  saxa,  and  Propertius,  v  (rv),  8,  10,  writes  cum  temere 
anguino  creditur  o^rl  manus  (Xeue-Wagener,  Formenlehre,  i3,  301).  The 
honest  37%  of  Catullus  and  Lygdamus  does  not  compel  a  resort  to  such  un- 
usual constructions,  and  is  therefore  by  no  means  to  be  despised.  Dissen  and 
Postgate  (Selections  from  Tibullus,  p.  XLIII),  on  purely  subjective  grounds  and 
without  consulting  indices,  lexicons,  or  Latin  authors,  have  discovered  that 
Lygdamus  is  an  author  of  "  poor  Latinity."  On  the  contrary,  his  Latinity  is 
more  natural  and  in  some  respects  better  than  that  of  the  mature  Ovid.  Yet 
even  the  latter  —  like  Euripides,  an  unrivalled  master  of  the  graceful  and 
pleasing  forensic  style  —  could  give  most  of  us  lessons  in  correct  Latinity  to 
our  great  and  lasting  profit. 


i66  Robert  S.  Radford  [1920 

and  almost  precisely  the  proportion  of  Vergil.  In  fact  that 
strange  and  anomalous  thing,  the  actual  preponderance  of 
dactyls  in  a  Latin  epic  poem,  could  never  by  any  possibility 
arise  in  the  more  vigorous  epic  hexameter  (versus  fortis  or 
grams) ;  it  must  appear  first  in  the  soft  and  tender  strains  of 
the  elegy  (versus  mollis  or  levis) ,  and  may  be  transferred  thence 
to  epic  verse,  as  Ovid  transferred  it  in  the  Metamorphoses 
and  Valerius  Flaccus  later  employed  it  in  imitation  of  Ovid. 
Even  Ovid  in  his  mature  period  has  recognized  this  difference 
to  some  extent;  for  the  hexameter  of  elegy  in  the  Heroides 
(first  series)  reaches  56.4%,  while  the  epic  hexameter  of  the 
Metamorphoses  does  not  exceed  54.8%. 

It  is  evident  then  that  in  the  first  edition  of  the  A  mores 
which  was  published  in  14  B.C.,32  only  a  few  years  after  the 
Sulpicia  elegies,  the  Ciris,  and  the  Aetna,  Ovid  had  had  little 
opportunity  to  develop  a  marked  dactylic  virtuosity  and  to 
become  a  highly  artistic  elegiac  poet.  We  may  be  sure  then 
that  the  first  Amores  of  14  B.C.  showed  only  a  very  moderate 
advance  upon  the  47.4%  of  the  Sulpicia  elegies,  and  they 
may  even  have  contained,  like  the  latter,  a  few  polysyllabic 
endings  in  the  pentameter.  Up  to  14  B.C.  Ovid  was  in  fact 
fully  as  much  an  epic  as  an  elegiac  poet  (see  Am.  i,  i,  1-18 
on  his  early  ambition  to  excel  in  epic  themes),  and  he  was 
still  far  from  having  attained  in  the  Sulpicia  poems  the  high 
virtuosity  which  appears  in  three  of  the  four  genuine  elegies 
of  Tibullus'  second  book,  namely,  55%  or  more.33  Two  of 
the  short  Sulpicia  elegies  and  the  equally  short  Cornutus 
poem  show,  it  is  true,  an  equal  or  a  superior  number  of  dac- 
tyls,34 but  four  Sulpicia  poems  and  the  long  Messalinus  elegy 

32  Schanz,  op.  cit.  270  (§293),  suggests  that  these  elegies  probably  came 
first  separately  before  the  public,  but  later  were  collected  in  the  edition  of 
14  B.C.     This  seems  quite  probable,  especially  as  the  spondaic  Amores  show 
in  general  the  predominance  of  the  same  schemata  or  figures  of  the  hexameter 
as  the  Sulpicia  and  Messalinus  poems. 

33  The  first  elegy  of  the  second  book  has  55.2%  in  the  distich,  the  third  has 
50%,  the   fourth  55%,  and  the  sixth  56.8%;  see  the  figures  of  Cartault,  op. 
cit.  7,  and  Ehrengruber,  op.  cit.  x,  5. 

34  iv,  6  (20  vss.)  has  50%  of  dactyls ;  iv,  5  (20  vss.)  58.3%  ;  n,  2  (20  vss.)  50%. 


Vol.  li]  The  Juvenile  Works  of  Ovid  167 

(n,  5)  have  a  decided  preponderance  of  spondees.  A  marked 
change  in  Ovid's  whole  attitude  took  place,  however,  after 
14  B.C.  For  unlike  the  Ciris  and  the  Aetna,  which  did  not 
greatly  increase  their  author's  reputation,  the  Amores,  im- 
mediately upon  their  first  publication,  achieved  a  prodigious 
success;  they  at  once  became  popular  favorites,  and,  like 
the  Eclogues  of  Vergil,  were  frequently  sung  in  the  theatre 
with  accompanying  dance  (Trist.  n,  519;  v,  7,  25).  The 
favorable  reception  thus  accorded  to  the  elegies  naturally 
determined  the  direction  of  the  poet'3  genius  and  led  him  to 
devote  himself  uninterruptedly  (with  the  exception  of  the 
tragedy  of  Medea)  for  sixteen  years  (14  B.C.  to  2  A.D.)  to  the 
perfection  of  an  elegiac  style  which  surpassed  even  the  later 
work  of  Tibullus. 

Having  developed  a  remarkable  and  distinctive  technique 
in  the  Heroides  and  the  Ars,  Ovid  resolved  to  make  the  first 
Amores  conform  fully  to  his  later  rules  of  art.  The  revision 
was  not  due  to  the  fact  that  this  popular  and  successful  work 
was  poetically  immature,  nor  even  chiefly  to  the  desire  to 
add  a  series  of  new  elegies ;  as  he  himself  tells  us  in  the  pre- 
fixed epigram,  the  question  was  primarily  one  of  more  careful 
finish  and  elaboration :  "  hoc  illi  praetulit  auctor  opus  " 
(cf.  Gruppe,  op.  cit.  377).  In  brief,  his  principal  purpose 
was  to  eliminate  all  polysyllabic  endings,  to  introduce  every- 
where the  full  dactylic  virtuosity,  to  multiply  the  dactylic 
beginnings,  and  to  remove  or  greatly  reduce  those  schemata, 
such  as  DSSS,  SDSS,  5555,  55,  SD,  and  the  like,  which 
were  no  longer  fully  acceptable.  The  view  adopted  by 
Heuwes  in  his  discussion  of  the  matter  (op.  cit.  31)  is  that 
the  revision  "  consisted  in  here  and  there  substituting  a  word 
that  was  more  suitable  for  one  that  was  less  suitable  to  the 
metre  and  sense,  or  in  changing  the  collocation  of  words  o1 
verses,  or  in  doing  all  these  things  at  the  same  time."  These 
conclusions  are  partly  correct,  but  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
both  the  additions  and  the  alterations  were  far  more  extensive 
and  thoroughgoing  than  Heuwes  supposes.  The  first  edition 


1 68  Robert  S.  Radford  [1920 

was  in  fact  subjected  to  a  drastic  revision  and  was  almost 
entirely  rewritten  in  conformity  to  the  new  rules  of  art.35 
Nevertheless  abundant  traces  of  the  character  of  the  first 
edition  still  remain ;  for  in  not  a  few  cases  the  poet  has 
triumphed  over  the  versifier  and  the  artist,  and  a  number 
of  the  original  poems  of  the  first  edition  have  been  retained 
with  very  moderate  changes.  This  fact  may  be  shown  very 
clearly  in  two  ways,  if  the  writer  correctly  understands  the 
true  nature  of  Ovidian  versification.  For  the  full  and  har- 
moniously developed  virtuosity  in  the  Ovidian  sense  means 
first  that  there  shall  be  a  considerable  preponderance  of 
dactyls  in  the  distich  taken  as  a  whole,  and  secondly  that 
there  shall  be  a  similar  preponderance  of  dactyls  in  each 
member  taken  singly,  that  is,  in  both  the  hexameter  and  the 
pentameter  lines.  It  is  evident  therefore  that  virtuosity  is 
lacking  in  the  Amores  in  two  ways:  (i)  when  the  spondees 
are  either  equal  or  predominant  in  the  whole  distich ; 
(2)  when  they  are  equal  or  predominant  in  the  hexameter 
line  (versus  fortis  or  diirus)  alone.  With  this  understanding 
of  the  nature  of  virtuosity,  I  may  summarize  the  facts  briefly 
as  follows.  A  considerable  part  of  the  second  edition  is 
entirely  new  and  consists  of  such  newly  written  elegies  as 
n,  17  and  1 8 ;  in,  i  and  15  ;  and  also  the  last  18  lines  of  in. 
9  (the  epicedion  upon  Tibullus).36  A  still  larger  part  has 
been  completely  or  almost  completely  revised  in  order  to 
bring  the  elegies  up  to  practically  the  same  virtuosity  as  the 

35  The  extraordinary  importance  which  the  mature  Ovid  attached  to  formal 
poli.-h  and  elegance  is  not  only  evident  from  the  exacting  rules  \vhii  h  he  strictly 
observes,  but  also  from  his  own  express  statements.     Thus  he  speaks  of  de- 
stroying many  works  which  would  have  won  popular  favor,  but  which  he 
himself  considered  "  faulty  "  (I'itiosa,  Trist.  iv.  10,  61"),  he  often  laments  that 
the  poems  of  the  exile  are  composed  with  less  care  and  skill  than  was  his  wont 
(Pont,  i,  5,  15  ff. ;    57  ff.),  and  he  bitterly  complains  that  the  Metamorphoses 
were  uncorrected  and  lacked  the  finishing  touches  at  the  moment  of  his  banish- 
ment, as  in  Trist.  in,  14,  21,  illud  opus  .  .  .  nunc  incorrectiun  populi  pervenit 
in  ora.     See  also  ib.  i,  7,  27  ff.,  defuit  et  scriptis  ultima  lima  meis;   i,  7,  39  ff. ; 
H,  555- 

36  On  the  new  elegies,  see  also  Schanz,  op.  cit.  270  (§  293). 


Vol.  li]  The  Juvenile  Works  of  Ovid  169 

Ars  or  the  Heroides  (first  series),  namely,  57%  in  the  dis- 
tich ;37  about  a  fourth  part  of  the  whole  edition,  however, 
shows  only  slight  and  moderate  changes  from  its  original 
form.  That  is,  of  the  forty-nine  elegies,38  fourteen  have  been 
only  partially  and  imperfectly  revised.  A  single  poem  of 
66  verses  (in,  8)  remains  at  practically  the  same  average  as 
the  Sulpicia  elegies,  namely,  47.98%  of  dactyls  in  the  distich ; 
four  other  poems,  however,  of  184  verses  (i,  2.  13.  15  ;  in,  10) 
remain  with  the  dactyls  subordinate  in  the  hexameter  line, 
and  either  equal  (only  50%)  or  subordinate  (49.23%)  in  the 
whole  distich.  Five  elegies  (i,  14  ;39  n,  4.  8.  n;  in,  3),  of 
236  verses,  also  remain  with  the  dactyls  either  subordinate 
or  equal  in  the  hexameter  line,  and  with  52.4,  50.7,  51.2, 
50.6,  50.7%  respectively  in  the  whole  distich.  Two  elegies 
(n,  12.  14)  of  72  verses,  show  a  weak  pentameter  and  only 
51.2  and  52.3%  in  the  distich;  two  other  elegies  (in,  14  and 
the  first  three-fourths  of  in,  9,  the  epicedion  on  Tibullus, 
composed  in  19  B.C.),  with  100  verses,  are  also  low  in  their 
proportion  of  dactyls,  namely,  53.3  and  51.3%.  Further- 
more, very  largely  the  same  identical  schemata  are  predomi- 
nant in  all  these  elegies  as  we  find  preferred  in  the  Sulpicia 
elegies  (iv,  2-6)  and  in  the  imitation  of  Tibullus  (iv,  13). 
Thus  fourteen  elegies  of  658  verses  —  more  than  one-fourth 
of  the  total  number  —  conspicuously  lack  the  virtuosity ; 
among  these  are  included  some  of  the  most  notable  poems  in 
the  collection,  such  as  i,  2  (the  poet's  willing  submission  to 
Love),  i,  13  (Aurora  and  Tithonus),  i,  14  (Corinna's  use  of 
dyes),  i,  15  (epilogue  on  the  immortality  of  poesy),  n,  4 
(reasons  for  love),  n,  n  (lament  over  Corinna's  voyage), 

37  56.c/~c  in  the  Ars  (Drobisch),  and  57.6^  in  the  Heroides. 

3S  There  are  really  fifty  elegies,  as  Gruppe,  op.  cit.  377,  first  pointed  out, 
and  as  Ehwald,  the  latest  editor,  obtains,  by  breaking  up  n,  o  into  two  poems. 
In  order,  however,  to  avoid  confusion  and  to  be  uniform  with  the  results  of 
Hultgren  and  Drobisch,  my  statistics  (like  theirs)  are  everywhere  based  upon 
the  edition  of  Merkel,  Leipzig,  1887. 

39  This  is  the  poem  which,  through  its  reference  to  the  subjugation  of  the 
Sigambri  (15  B.C.),  dates  the  whole  original  collection. 


170  Robert  S.  Radford  [1920 

n,  12  (Corinna's  surrender),  n,  14  (the  evils  of  abortion, 
with  several  Lygdamus  verses  repeated),  in,  3  (Corinna's 
perjuries  unpunished),  in,  9  (epicedion  on  Tibullus,  50  out 
of  68  verses),  in,  14  (Corinna's  infidelities  best  unknown). 
The  percentage  of  the  nine  '  imperfect '  elegies  of  Books  I 
and  in  is  50.5%  of  dactyls  for  the  whole  distich,  of  the  five 
'imperfect'  elegies  of  Book  n,  51.1%,  and  the  difference 
between  the  perfect  and  the  imperfect  parts  of  the  second 
Amores  is  6%  for  the  four  poems  of  Book  I,  5.3%  for  the 
five  of  Book  11,  and  4.8%  for  the  five  of  Book  in.40  I  think 
it  quite  reasonable,  however,  to  assume  that,  even  in  the  case 
of  the  imperfect  elegies,  at  least  2.3%  of  actyls  have  been 
added  in  the  revision,  and  I  thus  reach  the  conclusion  that 
the  percentage  of  the  first  Amores  did  not  exceed  48.5%  of 
dactyls  for  the  whole  distich,  and  therefore  rose  only  slightly 
above  the  47.4%  of  the  Sulpicia  elegies  and  of  iv,  13-14. 

Though  less  important  than  the  sum  of  the  dactyls,  the 
proportion  of  dactylic  beginnings  also  requires  mention. 
The  percentage  of  dactylic  beginnings  in  both  hexameter  and 
pentameter  in  Am.  I  is  80 ;  in  the  four  imperfect  elegies 
(i,  2.  13.  14.  15)  it  is  73.4,  in  the  remainder  of  the  book  it  is 
82.2,  thus  giving  a  difference  of  8.8%  between  the  two  parts. 
We  may  consider  as  normal  for  the  mature  Ovid  the  per- 
centage in  both  hexameter  and  pentameter  of  the  Ars,  which 
is  82.3,  or  that  of  the  Fasti,  which  is  84.2.  Similarly  the 
percentage  of  dactylic  beginnings  in  the  whole  of  Am.  11  is 
78.6;  in  the  five  imperfect  elegies  (n,  4.  8.  n.  12.  14)  41  it  is 
71.6,  in  the  remainder  of  the  book  it  is  80.9,  giving  a  difference 
of  9.3%  between  the  two  parts.  With  these  five  elegies  of 
Am.  ii  we  may  fitly  compare  not  only  the  percentage  of  the 
Sulpicia  elegies  (iv,  2-6)  and  iv,  13-14,  which  is  69.7%  in 
142  verses,  but  also  that  of  the  early  Medicamen  Faciei  frag- 

40  In  the  case  of  in,  9,  the  Tibullus  epicedion,  only  the  first  50  verses  out  of 
68  are  used. 

41  n,  q  is  also  spondaic    if  \vc  cut  out  the  six  verses  (23-28)  which  Ovid 
seems  to  have  added  in  the  second  edition  in  order  to  join  the  originally  sepa- 
rate poems  9  and  9  H. 


Vol.  li]  The  Juvenile  Works  of  Ovid  171 

ment  of  100  verses,  which  is  70,  while  its  percentage  of  dactyls 
for  the  distich  is  also  low,  namely,  53. 5-42  The  percentage 
of  dactylic  beginnings  in  the  whole  of  Am.  in  is  77.1 ;  in  the 
four  imperfect  elegies  (in,  8.  10.  14,  first  50  vs.  of  9)  it  is 
74,  in  the  remainder  of  the  book  it  is  78.5,  giving  a 
difference  of  4.5  between  the  two  parts.  I  consider  this  brief 
summary  of  usage  affecting  the  first  foot  sufficient  for  the 
practical  purposes  of  the  present  study,  and  in  my  subsequent 
discussion  shall  purposely  omit  this  feature  of  the  single  elegies 
from  the  tabular  statements.  I  may  add,  however,  that  the 
percentage  of  dactyls  in  the  first  foot  in  Catalepton,  ix  is 
71.9;  owing  to  preoccupation  with  the  dissyllabic  close  and 
to  imitation  of  Catullus,  it  sinks  in  the  Lygdamus  elegies  to 
55-8  43  and  in  the  Sulpicia  letters  (iv,  .7-12,  40  verses)  to  50; 
it  rises  again  to  67.7  in  the  Panegyric,  66.8  in  the  Ciris,  and 
67.1  in  the  Cnlex.^ 

42  Hultgren,  op.  cit.  28  ff.,  argues  that  no  importance  should  be  attached 

lo  so  small  a  fragment,  yet  at  the  same  time  (pp.  32  f.)  shows  the  greatest 

uneasiness  because  of  its  evidence,  apparently  fearing  that  it  may  bring  to 

naught  the  whole  elaborate  fabric  of  Ovidian  virtuosity.     One  wonders  what 

he  would  have  thought  if  he  had  examined  the  single  Amorcs. 

4:!  It  varies  greatly  in  single  Lygdamus  elegies  from  82.2,  61.8,  and  65.7 
in  i,  5,  and  6  to  53.4,  55.2,  and  45.8  in  2,  3,  and  4.  In  the  technical  Halieutica 
it  sinks  also  to  47.7. 

44  On  account  of  the  length  of  the  article  it  has  been  found  necessary  to  omit 
here  five  tables  giving  exact  statistics  for  the  fourteen  elegies.  Two  articles, 
which  continue  the  present  study  and  treat  the  language  and  schemata  of 
Book  iv  of  the  Tibulline  Corpus,  will  be  published  shortly  in  the  American 
Journal  of  Philology. 


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